amidst the embers
by bravevulnerability
Summary: "If you believe anything, just believe that I love you." Post-ep for 7x01, Driven.


_"How long can my heart be cold and hunted?_  
_I'm pushing away, love_  
_Don't leave me or let me go_  
_I'm begging you to come back_  
_Hold me and I will stay"_

_-Canción de la Noche, Matthew Perryman Jones_

* * *

"You cut your hair."

His fingers trail slowly through the shortened locks, slipping back to her shoulder when she doesn't reply, squeezing. He's trying, trying to reconnect, to find his way back home with her, but her heart is so tired, so drained and battered from two months of fighting for him, hoping beyond the bounds of logic that he was alive and coming back to her. And now here she is, in his arms, but there's so much distance, so many unanswered questions and unintentional hurts like a chasm between them that she doesn't yet know how to fill.

But she wants to try.

Kate sighs, doesn't want to move, but lifts her head, runs her tearstained fingers through her hair. Her appearance is honestly the last thing she could care about, but there's something in his eyes as his fingers follow her own through the cropped strands once more, a hint of yearning and regret that begs her to tell him the story, tell him anything she wants. She's been too quiet ever since he returned, too withdrawn, and it isn't necessarily fair to him, but instinct tells her to pull away, to protect herself. But she doesn't want to have to protect herself here, not from him.

"It was in the way," she murmurs, abruptly making a stand from the bed and pacing in front of him, feeling his eyes tracking her every step, feeling the phantom heat of his palm still curved over her shoulder. "I would be pinning things to the murder board and it would fall." She waves her hand over her face. "Get in my eyes. Your mom helped me cut it."

It wasn't necessarily a lie. She had been alone the night she chopped her hair off a month into his disappearance, burning a hole into his picture with her stare. She had lost the black rubber band she usually wore around her wrist and her hair just kept slipping from behind her ears, rubbing up against her cheeks and caressing her jaw. She had been… uptight, while he was gone, easily set off by any little thing when she was alone. That night, all alone in her empty apartment with nothing but a collage depicting his disappearance as company, she had lost her patience, snatched a pair of scissors from her office, and stormed into her bathroom.

She hadn't even looked while she'd done it, carelessly snipping away at the strands dangling upon her shoulders until a pile of caramel locks sat in her bathroom sink.

When she had returned to the loft the next day, Martha had greeted her in the foyer with a gasp that mercifully eased into an understanding sigh.

"Oh, Katherine," his mother had murmured, so soft and compassionate despite the heavy weight of distress she knew Martha carried on her shoulders with each passing day that her son was still missing. "Come with me, kiddo."

Martha had ushered her upstairs to her bedroom with a gentle hand on her back, sat her down in front of the vanity that took up half of an entire wall, and trimmed the uneven strands, perfecting the style to look as if Kate had made the cut with purposeful intent.

"There, no harm done," she had said with a waning smile, combing steady fingers through Kate's hair. "I think Richard will like it."

Kate had only nodded her agreement, having hardly glanced at herself in the mirror.

Martha, she thinks, is the strongest of them all – an immovable rock of reassurance to her granddaughter and almost daughter-in-law alike, always keeping hope alive even when her blazing blue eyes dulled with worry and uncertainty.

"You look beautiful," he offers and she forces herself to cease her restless circuit around the bed to meet his gaze. "You're always beautiful," he adds with a shrug and then glances down to the hands knotted in his lap. "Did the photographer we hired get any pictures of you? On our - on our wedding day?"

A low whine catches in her throat, an unexpected sound of long repressed anguish she swallows down and shakes off when he starts to rise from the bed in concern.

"He did," she answers with a frown, her lips falling so naturally into the downward curve these days. "I told him to get rid of them."

He looks hurt at the news, his entire face falling, but he understands, she can tell by the pained tint to his greyed irises that he understands too well what his disappearance has done to her, to them.

"I wish I could have seen you," he mumbles, getting to his feet, but keeping the few steps of space between them, too much space. "Kate, you have to know how much I wanted to marry you."

"Castle-"

"No," he argues, his voice gruff and cracking with it, the first real sign of emotion she's seen from him since the hospital. She knows he cares, she does, but he's been so flippant about the whole ordeal in front of her and his family, trying to play it off as no big deal with jokes and strained smiles, but the lack of answers, the lack of faith, has been wearing him thin. "I know - no, I can't even _imagine_ how you must feel, what it must have been like, and I hate not being able to even properly reassure you because I can't remember the last two months. I hate all of this, Kate. I hate looking at you right now, seeing that – that heartbreak on your face and knowing I did that."

She wipes furiously at the tears cascading down her cheeks; she thought she would be okay after giving into a few stray tears against his chest, but this is worse. Seeing him looking back at her with such helplessness has her eyes burning with endless pools of moisture.

"You didn't," she rasps, thankful that her hair is still long enough to provide a curtain of protection to hide behind. "It wasn't your fault, Castle. It wasn't."

She senses him once he's standing in front of her, his body still the attracting magnet to hers, and she hates that she's given him reason to hesitate before he lays gentle hands upon her arms.

"I would never leave you," he whispers, tilting forward to rest his lips to her hairline while hers starts to quiver. "I would never choose to leave you, Kate."

She finally gives in to the urgent need pulsating beneath her skin to latch onto him, roping her arms around the solid wall of his torso, careful of the bullet graze he doesn't even remember suffering from and melding the trembling line of her body to his.

Her sorrow has been suppressed for so long, reduced to silent tears and quiet sobs, but as his arms surround her and his stubbled, sunburned cheek presses to hers, the restraints on her grief break apart and she loses herself against him, crying into his neck, drenching his skin with the hot stain of tears.

"I love you, I love you, please believe that, please, Kate," he's chanting against her temple, digging his fingers into her back, keeping her upright when her knees start to buckle beneath her. "If you believe anything, just believe that I love you."

"I do," she croaks out, swallowing down the final traces of tears, tightening her grip on the back of his t-shirt. "I believe you."

"I won't go anywhere again," he promises, but she shakes her head.

"You can't say that-"

"I _can_," he insists petulantly, almost making her laugh. Almost. "I'll never let you go."

That has her clutching him tighter, her nails like talons in the flesh beneath his shoulder blades. She doesn't want to let go either, she can't lose him, not again, not-

"Kate, breathe," he reminds her, rubbing her back, inhaling and exhaling in a purposefully exaggerated manor until she can match his breathing again.

"I'm right here."

"I know," she gets out, her heart still beating a little too fast, galloping with a familiar form of accompanying panic.

"Want to sit?"

She nods against his shoulder and he transfers them to their original resting place at the edge of the bed, but she urges him further up the mattress, up until they can both collapse against the stack of pillows and she can curl her body around his like she's craved doing for too long.

"You know me," he murmurs after she's finished tangling their limbs, cupping the back of her skull, circling his thumb over her scalp. Kate presses her forehead to his sternum, taking a deep breath of him. He doesn't yet smell like home. "Better than anyone else."

She doesn't refute that, still finding herself believing it even after the events of the past two months. Evidence had mounted against him, people had shaken their heads at her, but she had never stopped believing in him, trusting in the depth of the connection they share. He loves her, he would never fake a kidnapping to be away from her. The answers, the truth, are still out there and she's determined to find it all with Castle at her side.

"We can't pick up where we left off," he repeats, brushing the short waves of hair from her cheeks. "But we'll find our way back and then - then we'll be even better. I promise."

Her gaze flickers up to see that hopeful little boy gleam is in his eyes and she wants that, to regain some of the hope that she's lost, and she tugs him with her as she rolls to her back.

"Kate-"

"Just kiss me," she murmurs, stroking at the patches of scruff peppering his jaw, at the overgrown locks of hair falling over his forehead as he hovers precariously above her, staring down with concern pouring from his gaze. "I never thought I'd see you again. Please, just-"

He covers her mouth with tentative lips that are rough, chapped and dry over hers, dusting gently before applying only the softest pressure. Usually she would hurry him along, the desperation licking at her insides begging for more, but tonight – tonight she savors.

Her hands splay over his back, mapping the familiar plains beneath the fabric of the robe she eases from his shoulders. She notices the ridges of bone are more pronounced. He's not underweight, the doctor deemed him healthy, but she knows his body just as well as her own and she can feel the change underneath her fingertips. Another change she doesn't know how to feel about.

She disposes of his t-shirt next, squeezing her eyes shut when the pure feel of his bare skin beneath her palms nearly moves her to tears.

"Kate?" Even with her eyes closed, she can feel the worry radiating from him as he skims his fingers over her cheek. "Kate, did I do something wrong? Did I-"

"No, I just - I missed you," she confesses, smoothing her hands down his sides, avoiding the bullet wound and opening her eyes.

His face is filled with heartache.

"I'm sorry," he says again, earnest and mournful. "I'm so sorry."

She shakes her head, traps his skull between her hands when he moves to pull away.

"It's okay," she finds herself whispering, slipping her arms around his neck and coaxing him down to rest atop her, just rest. "We're okay. We'll be okay."

"Will we?" he asks, so quiet she almost misses it. She releases a sigh that trembles on its way past her lips, knocks her head against his and presses a kiss to the shell of his ear.

"We have to be. I love you," she whispers, realizing it's the first time she's said it to him since he's come back. "I love you so much, Rick, and I can't do this without you. I don't want to."

He tries to rise, but her arms are like a vice around him, not letting go, so he eases back onto his good side, brings her with him as he reaches for the lamp on the nightstand, enveloping the room in darkness and moonlight.

Kate sheds the robe from her body, eliminating as many layers between them as she can, and huddles closer to nestle in the warm cove of his body.

"Don't go anywhere," she warns when the exhaustion of the day, the last two months, begins seeping its way into her bones. She hoped it might come off as a joke, a halfhearted threat, but she knows it falls only as a plea to his ears when he tightens the arms around her and nods, propping his chin atop her head.

"Told you, Kate," he rumbles, one of his hands pursuing a gentle trek through her hair again, lulling her closer towards the alluring call of sleep. "Never going anywhere again. Not without you."

* * *

When she opens her eyes the next morning, he's still in her arms.


End file.
